Summary

As good as it could've been, but sluggish, incomplete and limited

The Good

The setting made for a light-hearted and original take on managerial strategy games, with a lot of dry humour ranging from the nasty strategies (such as oversalting chips to make people buy more fizzy drinks) to the people throwing up and the various types of entertainers stopping people getting bored in the queue. Some of the rides look fantastic, and there's a lasting challenge to be had, as it takes a while to learn how to build the perfect park. The manual was well-written.

The Bad

The Amiga 500 wasn't really powerful enough to recreate this to its full effect. A lot of compromises were made, and while some were minor (less graphical detail, less rides and shops), a few were major losses, such as the ability to sample the rides yourself.

It was also quite buggy, with designing roller coasters being very tricky and often getting completely stuck, forcing you to tear down a near-complete ultra-long design - all of which has cost you time, and therefore money.

The mouse pointer moved extremely slowly, and the keyboard input was excruciating, rarely picking up all the letters you types.

Moving overseas didn't seem to work - which is the equivalent of a racing game only having one circuit.

Being an ongoing challenge with no specific goals, it was all too easy to lose focus and end up plodding along, rarely anticipating problems before they occur. Long-term durability suffered as a result.

The Bottom Line

Horribly over-rated at the time, this is one Bullfrog shouldn't've bothered to convert to the A500. On the PC it was a pretty good game, but not here.